God Forgets About the Poor, by Peter Polites

A son turns his mother's migrant story into first class literary fiction.

In the prelude to Peter Polites third novel, God Forgets About the Poor, a sassy, wise-cracking mother gives her adult son some tips on how to write her story. “You don't know the first thing about me,” she admonishes her gay son, warning him off entwining his personal story too much with hers. Through the course of the novel we learn about Honoured's (the mother's name) growing up on the Greek island of Lefkada. It's the post-war period, and Greece is in the midst of a civil war. Honoured and her sisters are peasants, and being girls, they're not prized. In fact, their very female existence is a source of shame. It was a boy, highly valued by agrarian Greek culture, that their parents really wanted.

Honoured will eventually make her way to Sydney, Australia, marry and have two children. She carries with her the scars from a serious leg infection she contracted in Greece as a child, which left her hospitalised for a year. She remains ambivalent about her life, torn between two cultures, and is resigned, though not happy, about her second class status as a woman of migrant origin. An aura of dissatisfaction surrounds her.

Polites could easily have fallen into the trap of writing a straight, fictionalised biography of his mother in this deeply resonant novel. Instead he's opted to write a long prose-poem, a rich and evocative portrait of peasant life in Greece during the post-war period and an homage to the migrant experience. There are profound layers of meaning to be gleaned from Polites' fine, textured prose as he explores identity, being, gender and one's place in the world. This is an absorbing, formally innovative book that demands careful reading and will most likely appeal to fans of Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. 

A triumph of skilled storytelling.

God Forgets About the Poor, by Peter Polites. Published by Ultimo Press. $34.99

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